


Jagged Pieces

by Anonymous



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Mental Instability, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 01:18:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11910207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: They just need to make it north. To Jon.





	Jagged Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in a world where Sansa never made it out of King's Landing, but was kept in the dungeons, tortured and experimented upon. Arya's storyline is mostly the same, but when she catches wind of Sansa's fate in Bravoos, she comes back to Westeros to rescue her sister from the Lannisters.

It takes Arya nearly five years before she manages to smuggle Sansa out of King's Landing, and when she does the Boltons hold Winterfell, most of her family is long gone, Jon is the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, and Sansa…

Sansa is not as she was.

She never will be again.

“For the Watch. For the Watch. For the Watch.”

Arya twitches. Three moons, they’ve been on the road, and she’s no closer to making sense of her sister’s mutterings than she was when she’d broken into her cell in the dungeons beneath the Red Keep, Sansa pale and nude, knees close to her chest as she whispered, “Fire and blood. Fire and blood.” She’d been staring straight ahead, at the claw marks littering the stone wall, and when she turned her head to look at Arya, she showed no surprise at seeing her. No shock, no joy, no relief. No nothing.

Only; “Fire and blood.”

Arya tries her best to ignore the mutterings and the whispers. She focuses on getting them safely north, towards Jon. She tries not to think about what they’ve done to her sister, but it’s impossible to forget. Sansa makes it impossible.

“Seven hells!” Arya groans when she looks up from the hare she’s skinning to find Sansa barefoot again. She’s shed her cloak this time as well, head tilted up towards the sky as the snowfall covers her copper red hair. Her eyes are closed, and she’s smiling. Arya could almost believe she was the Sansa from before if it wasn’t for the way she turned to face her, lips shaping out words Arya won’t understand for some time yet.

“He’s dead now, they killed him.”

“Who?” Arya asks, though she knows it’s useless. Half the time, Sansa herself seems not to know what her mutterings mean, but Arya is wary of it all the same. More than once her words have come true. More than once, Sansa’s strange intuition has saved their lives.

As expected, Sansa ignores her. She says, “But he’ll live again. She’ll wake him. Fire and blood. Fire and blood.” Her voice is always so quiet now, an eerie whisper that never quite manages to get above a breathy rasp.

Arya remembers before, when everyone would praise Sansa for her pretty voice; even Joffrey had liked to hear her sing. And now, as they’ve made their way from King’s Landing through the Riverlands and past the Neck, men have commented on her sister’s voice, lewd comments about how she’d moan so prettily for them, her pretty sister.

Sansa, mercifully, seems blind and deaf to them all, and Arya would much prefer to avoid the men at all costs, but sometimes, the inviting warmth of an inn along the Kingsroad and the promise of food have been too good to pass up.

It’s a small wonder that no one has recognised them, and Arya tries to keep them in the corners and shadows as much as possible, but Sansa is a beauty, and even the hood Arya forces her to wear inside cannot deter a curious man with lust in his blood and ale in his stomach. Arya wants to scream at them, wants to run them through with her Needle every time a man looks at her sister and reaches for her skirts with filthy, eager hands.

“Don’t you know?” she wants to yell at them as she snaps fingers and wrists and growls at them to stay away. “Don’t you know what she has suffered?”

But no one knows, and even Arya does not have the whole truth of what they did to her sister those years they spent apart. All Arya knows is that Sansa’s voice is so hoarse now from the days she had spent screaming in pain and terror from the horrors they put her through. She knows that Sansa’s throat is likely permanently damaged and her mind broken even as her body endured.

She’s rake thin, her skin discoloured from the cold, but Sansa never seems bothered by hunger or the weather. If anything, Arya thinks she’s looking a little better the further north they get, as if the land itself around her is giving her strength.

“Sansa! Put on your fucking boots. You’ll catch a cold and die before we ever make it to Jon.”

Sansa giggles quietly as she always does when Arya curses, but she does as bid this time, and Arya breathes a sigh of relief, thankful she doesn’t have to physically wrangle her sister into bundling up again.

Small wonders, she thinks.

She reckons they’re less than a sennight from Castle Black if they can keep up the pace, and that’s no guarantee with the way Arya is determined to circumvent Winterfell for fear of running into Bolton bannermen. Then there is Sansa.

Her sister has the nasty habit of disappearing among the surrounding trees the second Arya takes her eyes off her. She’s spent far more time than she cares to admit foraging into the woods, cursing up a storm that would have had her lady mother rolling in her grave if she had one. Even Arya’s skill at tracking, better than any of the boys she grew up with save maybe Jon, is not enough to beat Sansa at her games.

And it is games that she plays. Sansa seems to delight in making Arya chase after her, and when she tires of waiting, Sansa is the one who finds Arya.

“Boo,” she’ll whisper from over Arya’s shoulder, laughing and dancing away on nimble feet when Arya gasps and whirls with Needle at the ready.

Gods, but Arya cannot wait for them to reach the Wall. To see Jon again, to feel safe finally and have her brother share in the burden of keeping their sister safe from those who would do her harm, including herself. Sansa might have a woman’s body now, but her mind is so very fragile, even childlike sometimes. Loathe as Arya is to admit it, Sansa needs constant watching. 

Arya shudders and sneaks a glance at her sister. She sits gracefully in her saddle now, murmuring words under her breath as she works strands of horse hair into fine braids. The reins are slack in her hands, the horse doing most of the steering. Her face is a little muddied, but mostly clean, and for a moment, as Arya blinks, they’re back in the Red Keep, Sansa’s face is splattered with flecks of blood and none of it hers.

She steps over broken limbs and groaning men.

“ _We should leave now. They’ll send the Kingsguard soon_.”

Arya swallows at the memory and forces it from her mind. She doesn’t want to think of her sister like that ever again.

She desperately wants to ask, sometimes, what they did to her in those dungeons, wants to ask what spells they wove on her to change her so, what torture she suffered. They left her face alone, but her arms and legs are littered with scars. Even her back is covered in them. They never seem to bother Sansa, and if she’s in pain, she never mentions it, but Arya burns with rage every time she sees them.

Arya hates that she abandoned Sansa in the Keep while she ran off to save herself, to grow strong in the city of Braavos before returning to Westeros when rumour reached her of what had become of her sister.

She wants to ask if getting her out of King’s Landing five years too late is enough for Sansa to forgive her for abandoning her in the first place, for leaving her behind in the Lion’s den with no allies and only their enemies around her. But Arya knows that if Sansa ever had it in her to hate her before, she does not do so now.

Arya would beg her forgiveness if she thought Sansa would recognise that Arya had done something to be forgiven for.

But Sansa won’t acknowledge or recognise her transgression, so Arya forces the words back and privately swears that she’ll earn her redemption by protecting Sansa, because even though Arya is the younger one, she is her sister’s keeper, and she _will_ keep her safe.

**

They’re about a day’s ride from Castle Black when Sansa halts her horse and refuses to move. Arya pinches the bridge of her nose in annoyance. Sansa has been unusually pliant for days now, cheerfully following Arya’s commands. She should have known Sansa was due for an episode.

“No,” Sansa says when Arya tells her they’re _so_ close. Just a day and they’ll be with Jon again. They need to keep moving north.

“No, we need to be here.”

“Why?” Arya demands, exasperated. She shifts in her saddle, looking at the land around them. There is only snow and trees for miles and miles to see. “There is nothing here! We need to keep moving, Sansa. There could be Bolton men close by.”

Sansa hums and tilts her head to one side, as if listening to something beyond Arya’s hearing. She does not acknowledge Arya’s very valid points. 

Arya sighs with frustration. “Sansa—”

“They’re late,” Sansa says. She turns to glance over her shoulder, the wind whipping her hair around her face. “They will be here soon. We must wait.”

Sansa refuses to say any more, and Arya knows better than to pry information from her; Sansa probably doesn’t even know who it is they are meant to wait for. Her instincts are strong and never wrong, but it takes time to puzzle out the meaning behind her words. If forced, Arya would label Sansa’s intuition as something otherworldly, something decidedly _other_.

Still, she has learnt to trust it in the months they have been travelling. If Sansa says they must wait, Arya will follow her sister’s instinct.

“This better be worth it,” she grouches, and Sansa giggles at her, high-pitched and sweet.

At least one of them is amused.

By nightfall, Arya’s patience is about ready to snap. Just as she’s about to demand that they start moving again, a twig breaks in the distance. Arya shoots to her feet, dousing the fire they’ve had going to keep warm and covering it with a woollen blanket to keep the smoke from giving them away. She grips Needle in her hand, readying her stance for battle if need be.

She turns to look at Sansa, only to find her hanging upside down from a branch in the tree behind her. The skirt of her dress hangs over her thighs and belly, revealing the thin underthings beneath.

“Sansa!” Arya hisses, but Sansa only giggles and sways on the branch, her long hair teasing the snow-covered ground. “Get down from there, and cover yourself up!”

Sansa ignores her. “They’re here,” she says, and out of the trees steps a large blonde woman in armour, followed by a young man who promptly squeaks in surprise when he sees Sansa and swirls on his heel so he faces the opposite way.

The woman stares at them, incredulous.

“Who are you?” Arya demands harshly. She takes a step to the side, strategically placing herself in front of where Sansa is still dangling upside down. “State your name and business.”

The woman shifts on her feet. Her shoulders are set stiffly, but she lowers the sword she had raised as she looks from Sansa to Arya and back again. “L-lady Sansa,” she stutters, and Arya bristles defensively.

“Who are you?” she demands again, raising Needle in a more aggressive position.

“You must be lady Arya,” the woman says. She looks back at Sansa. “You look very much like your mother, my lady.”

Arya’s breath hitches at the mention of her mother, and behind her, Sansa swings on her branch in an upwards arch, lets her legs slip from their grip on the wood and flips in the air to land gracefully on her feet.

The woman’s mouth drops.

“Sapphire,” Sansa says nonsensically as she smoothes her skirts into place. She’s not wearing her cloak.

Arya wants to cry from frustration.

“I—” The woman stares at them uncertainly, and sends a helpless glance back at her companion. He still has his back to them. “I am Brienne of Tarth, and this is my companion and squire, Podrick,” she says and gestures at the man.

 _Tarth_ , Arya thinks. _The Sapphire Island_.

Her free hand clenches around nothing. She just barely refrains from stealing a look at her sister. 

“I swore an oath to your lady mother,” Brienne continues after an awkward pause. “To find and protect her daughters.” Her face sets into a mask of determination. She falls to one knee suddenly, placing her sword in the snow before them. “Lady Sansa, lady Arya, I offer you both my services. I will shield your backs, keep your counsel, and give my life for yours if need be. I swear it by the old gods and the new.”

Arya is the one left gaping now, but Sansa doesn’t miss a beat. She laughs lowly, rasping out the words to accept this woman they’ve never met into their service. “Rise, Brienne of Tarth,” Sansa says before Arya can get her bearings. “You’re coming with us, now. We are to go north, to Castle Black and Jon Snow.”

“Sansa!” Arya snaps again and whirls on her sister. Brienne looks the honest sort, but they don’t know these people, and they can’t just go blurting out their secrets to strangers.

Sansa lets out another peal of laughter and skips around Arya and Brienne, too fast and silent for her own good, until she’s standing before Podrick, her face leaning close to his. “Hello,” she says, and giggles when the man startles violently, taking one step backward before he goes tripping over a twig and falls hard on his arse.

Arya groans at her sister’s antics. She watches as Sansa gets down on her haunches, eyeing Podrick for a long, hard moment. She lifts her hand, and they all seem to hold their breath as her fingers trace over the planes of Podrick’s face before stroking over his left eye.

“It’ll hurt,” she says, “but you’ll survive without it.” She is back by Arya’s side before Podrick can scramble to his feet, eyeing Sansa warily all the while.

“Right,” Arya says, because if nothing else, she’s learnt to roll with the punches. Apparently, Brienne and Podrick are to come with them. “Do you have horses?”

They don’t, Brienne tells them. They had to get rid of them while they’d stolen into Winterfell, investigating the news of Arya Stark taking Ramsay Bolton for a husband. “We could find no proof that the girl was not you, but it was obvious she is being held against her will. We thought to travel north towards your brother, to offer our help in saving her. You.”

Arya mulls this information over in her mind as they split up the horses between them, Sansa settling at her back and Brienne and Podrick riding astride Sansa’s horse. News had been scarce along the Kingsroad, but they’d heard rumblings about a wedding at Winterfell. Arya had scoffed at it then, but Sansa had smiled sadly and looked troubled, for once, keeping her silence.

She wonders now if Sansa had sensed something then, if the voices or whatever it was that gave her the words she kept muttering had told her something that she’d managed to keep to herself.

“Look, Arya! Castle Black.”

Arya looks, following the direction of where Sansa is pointing. Not that she needs to. They’ve been able to see the Wall for days, but now the shape of Castle Black springs into view, and Arya breathes a little easier, knowing they’ll be by the gates soon enough.

 _Jon_ , she thinks. Finally, after years apart, she will see her dearest brother again.

“Fire and blood, fire and blood,” Sansa sings behind her, and Arya stiffens in the saddle. She’s never figured out why Sansa has taken to the Targaryen words like a mantra, but more than any of her mutterings, “Fire and blood,” is what Sansa speaks of most frequently.

When they reach the gates, the men standing watch on the battlements above them regard them warily.

“Who goes there?”

“Arya Stark,” Arya shouts up at them. “With my sister, Sansa Stark, and our sworn shield, Brienne of Tarth and her squire, Podrick. We come seeking an audience with my brother, the Lord Commander.”

There is silence for a few seconds, but then; “Open the gates!”

Arya lets go of the breath she’d been holding as the gates creak open and they are granted access to ride through. They’re met with suspicious stares as they enter the courtyard, men, dirty and battle-weary, eyeing them with tense silence. Arya frowns as she takes in their surroundings. She tightens her grip around the reins in her hands. There has been a battle here.

She dismounts, absently petting the horse for his good service as she waits for Sansa to drop down next to her.

“Fire and blood,” Sansa whispers, and when Arya glances up at her, Sansa is looking over Arya’s shoulder.

Arya feels his stare then. She spins on her heels, running at Jon before he’s even managed to climb down the stairs leading to the courtyard. They meet halfway, both laughing and crying and gods, it’s been so long since she last hugged her brother like this.

Arya has missed him so very much. 

“I can’t believe it,” he speaks into her hair. “I can’t believe you’re here. I thought I was alone.”

“You’re not,” Arya breathes out shakily. “I’m here, and Sansa too.” She pulls back to show him their sister, and she’s so wrapped up in their reunion she almost misses the way Jon chokes out a disbelieving, “Sansa, _gods_.”

Sansa walks up to them slowly, more hesitant than Arya has seen her since she found her in her cell. She looks at Jon as if she doesn’t quite recognise him, and he looks different for sure, a man grown with a full beard and weary eyes. His hair is pulled back from his face, like their father had worn it, and he carries himself differently, shoulders pulled back and head held high and proud.

But he’s still the same Jon.

Sansa stops a few steps from them. She tilts her head to the side the way she sometimes does, when she is hearing something out of Arya’s reach.

Jon swallows heavily. “Sansa, I—” He cuts off abruptly when Sansa’s hands come up to cup his face.

“Fire and blood,” she says, and then leans in to kiss him.

Jon stiffens in surprise, and Arya blinks her disbelief. “ _Seven hells_ ,” she breathes out. Gods, but Jon was supposed to make looking after Sansa _easier_.

Sansa giggles against Jon’s mouth. She pats his cheek, says, “Husband,” and then bends to press her lips to Arya’s temple before pushing past them both so she can lavish kisses and hugs to Ghost who’s followed his master outside.

He’s huge, his white coat gleaming in the light of day, and Arya feels a pang of sorrow and regret as she thinks of Nymeria and Lady.

“What-what happened to her?” Jon asks, staring after Sansa as if he’s never seen the girl before.

Arya sighs and runs a hand through her tangled hair. “That is a long tale, and I know only some of it, but. She’s…she’s different now. What they did to her, it changed her.”

Jon clenches his hands into tight fists, carefully keeping his arms by his sides, and says nothing. He doesn’t take his eyes off Sansa.

Arya sighs again. “Come, brother,” she says. “We have much to talk about.”


End file.
